Insurance charging me £700 for a cancelled policy

thescouselander

I've never been with the same insurer in two consecutive years but every policy I've had would provide a refund for unused months of insurance. I've just checked my current policy and it's the same and there are no exceptions stated.

Of course if the OP did make a claim he will have to pay the whole premium.

londonTiger

angrycrow wrote: »

What catches a lot of new drivers out on the black box policies is the declared mileage. On a traditional policy there is an element on trust, as the insurer does not know what mileage you are doing. On a black box policy they track every mile.

A lot of new drivers massively under estimate their mileage taking policies for 3000 or 5000 miles a year as they work out cheaper. They then use up this annual mileage allowance in the first quarter and have to buy additional miles. Theses additional miles can costs a huge amount. The driver then thinks they can cancel mid term when they have used up their miles and walk away but the insurer is entitled by the terms and conditions to adjust the original premium to reflect what the actual mileage would have been over the full year.

As a real world example a previous colleague took out a black box policy with a limit of 5000 miles a year which cost him £1800 compared to the £4000 he was quoted for a normal policy. After 3 months he had used up 3000 miles suggesting an actual mileage of 12000 a year. His response was not a problem I will buy more mileage, this turned out to be a cost of an additional £2200 to take him up to his actual mileage. His next response was not a problem I will cancel it when I hit 5000 miles, he was then advised to read the terms and conditions which stated if the policy was cancelled mid term the mileage would be adjusted to reflect a full years mileage and the appropriate additional premium applied before any pro rated return of premium. This ended up that if he cancelled at 5000 miles he would still owe over £900 plus cancellation fees. He did not help himself by speeding everywhere and was eventually banned from the work car park for dangerous driving and excess speed.

I would have thought that the sweet spot for mileage is around 8K. 4K-5K miles a year is really infrequent driving/short trips which may make your driving a bit rusty thus more prone to accidents.

Rain_Shadow

londonTiger wrote: »

I would have thought that the sweet spot for mileage is around 8K. 4K-5K miles a year is really infrequent driving/short trips which may make your driving a bit rusty thus more prone to accidents.

Interesting debate as to whether driving 13 miles a day every day of the year or 450 miles on one day once a month would make you more prone to accidents.

londonTiger

Rain_Shadow wrote: »

Interesting debate as to whether driving 13 miles a day every day of the year or 450 miles on one day once a month would make you more prone to accidents.

definately the driver that does a round trip from London to Leeds (450 miles) once a month and no other driivng and gets on the motorway with very rusty driving than someone who drives daily.

Silver-Surfer_2

londonTiger wrote: »

definately the driver that does a round trip from London to Leeds (450 miles) once a month and no other driivng and gets on the motorway with very rusty driving than someone who drives daily.

As its a 400 mile round trip the 50 mile warm up will knock off the rust.